


All of the Fire

by Nvr_Sk_to_Tll



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nvr_Sk_to_Tll/pseuds/Nvr_Sk_to_Tll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a question from Donna, Laura recalls her first conscious memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of the Fire

Laura was lost in her own thoughts, dark as they were, and so she did not respond when Donna first spoke. The only thing that shook her back into reality was her friend’s hand on her shoulder.

“Laura?”

“Hmm? Sorry. I was thinking about that Algebra test.”

This was a lie, as things so often were when Laura told Donna about her thoughts and activities. She did not want to mar this old friendship with the truth of her life and the things that went on in her head.

“I don’t know why you worry,” Donna sighed, “you know you did great on it. You always do.”

“I guess so.”

“Anyway, I was asking you, what’s your first memory?”

The two friends had finished their homework and now they were sitting on Laura’s bed.

“First memory? I dunno.”

“Well, think.”

Shifting, Laura stretched a little.

“You tell me yours,” she said, “and then maybe I’ll tell you mine.”

Donna smiled. It seemed like lately, she was so used to Laura deflecting any question at all that she no longer minded.

“Well, I think I was maybe two or three, and there was a really bad storm, lots of thunder. I remember I was lying in my crib, scared that something was going to get me…”

Laura smiled and pulled her knees up to rest her chin on them. She was no longer really listening to Donna. She was thinking of her first real conscious memory and trying to decide what she would make up in its place to tell Donna.

It was a very old memory. It was when they lived in the first house, the house where she was a baby, before she went to school  
////  
 _It was wake up time. She knew that because she could hear Mommy in the kitchen making breakfast._

 _The door of her room opened and Daddy came in, smiling. He picked her up out of her crib and hugged her. Daddy gave the best hugs sometimes, especially when he was really happy like he seemed now._

 _“And how’s my little princess this morning?”_

 _Laura giggled and buried her face in Daddy’s shoulder._

 _Then they were walking, out into the hallway and into the kitchen. Mommy was there, just like Laura thought, and she turned off the pans and things on the stove long enough to turn and take Laura from Daddy and give her kisses and tell her good morning. Mommy gave good hugs too._

 _Then Mommy said something to Daddy. She said “Leland, you’d better go turn on the heater in the living room. It’s pretty chilly.”_

 _So Daddy carried Laura to the living room and he set her on the floor and let her toddle over to the couch while he bent down next to the heater._

 _The heater was like a big metal box, and you had to open a little door in the side and turn a little knob to make the fire part come on inside the box. Laura had stopped and stared at the fire before, fascinated by the blue of it with the occasional flecks of yellow and red._

 _Mommy complained about the heater sometimes, and about the house, but Daddy would always say that it wasn’t so bad and that sometime soon they would have an even better place because of all the money he was making now._

 _Laura was busy at the couch, piling the throw pillows up and then toppling the stack only to pile it again, when she felt a bad feeling in her tummy. It was like when she was sick and Mommy made her stay in bed and brought her a lot of juice and then sometimes she had to go and see Dr. Hayward (she liked him; he always gave her cherry lollipops and when he gave shots they did not hurt at all.)_

 _The toddler, the little girl-child who had not a care in the world, turned and looked over at her Daddy. He was sitting on the floor, staring at the fire inside the heater. His face looked funny. It was just Daddy’s face, of course, but it looked twisty in a way, like there was something he did not know much about but wanted to. Then he turned a little and looked at Laura and smiled and he looked more like he should._

 _“C’mere, precious. Come sit with Daddy.”_

 _Laura went because, even though Daddy’s face still looked a little wrong somehow, even though his smile was crooked, he was Daddy and she was a good girl and always did what Mommy and Daddy told her to do._

 _Daddy pulled her onto his lap and then moved forward so that they were sitting closer to the heater. He was hunched over, his chin resting on top of Laura’s head._

 _“See the fire, Laura? Isn’t it pretty?”_

 _“Uh-huh.”_

 _It was fun to look at the flames, to watch them dance, but it was also too warm this close to the heater. The heater looked funny, wiggly sort of, like when they were driving in the summer on a really hot day and wiggly lines seemed to rise up off the road. The heat was making Laura suddenly sleepy. Not good sleepy, like when it was the end of the day and she was just tired, or like naptime, but sleepy in a way that hurt her head and made her eyes feel dry and itchy._

 _“Do you want to play with fire, Laura? Do you want to play with Bob?”_

 _And then Mommy was there, yelling at Daddy “Leland, what are you doing? Don’t put Laura so close…”_

 _And then Daddy had put Laura aside and he stood up and was talking to Mommy but Mommy scooped Laura up and carried her away and was asking over and over “Are you all right, sweetheart? Is Mommy’s baby all right?”_  
////  
“…so anyway, then I remember looking out the front window right as the lightning struck the Ogden’s house across the street. That place burned all night. I can even still sort of smell that smoke if I think hard enough.”

Donna finished and then leaned forward.

“Okay, I told you mine. Now, what’s your first memory?”

Laura quickly ran through her mental files, trying to think of something bland to tell her friend. Not the real fire memory. That was a little too odd, though Laura did choose a memory involving fire.

“I think…probably the big Fourth of July Festival when we were four. The year Ed Hurley’s pants caught on fire when he got too close to the barbecue pit.”

“And Mr. Martell shoved him into the lake?” Donna asked.

“Yep, that’s the one,” Laura said, and laughed.

The rest of the conversation that afternoon was fairly light; Laura made certain of that. Then Donna went home, and everything was still fine. Dinner was good, and Laura wrote for a long time in her diary before going to bed. She tried not to think any more about the memory because it was sort of silly and she supposed it really meant nothing. Just because her earliest memory was her father having one of his weird moods, that was no big deal. She had worse things to worry about.

BOB came to her again that night, was harsher than usual, but then he left and she slept and when she woke she looked out of her window at the new day and somehow, in spite of everything, she smiled.


End file.
